Read below about a how these people did it:
Many of these individuals started businesses with less than $1,000 and are now earning more than $1 million per year in revenue. All of them bootstrapped their own business with no outside cash and a minimal capital investment from their own bank account. Here is a brief primer on bootstrapping a business.
So how does one start with very little money and turn that into $1 million per year? Here are five stories of regular people building million-dollar businesses. Also keep in mind many of these businesses came from a passion of what they loved to do.
PostcardMania. Joy Gendusa was a freelancer who wanted to buy some postcards to advertise her business. She was shocked by the unnecessary fees she had to pay just to get some postcards made, so she decided to start her own postcard business with a friendly price structure for customers. PostcardMania was born.
Gendusa started the company with no capital investment and used the money from the first customer to pay the printer for her first postcards. In the early days, the payment schedule was tight. She had to get money from the customers and use that cash to pay her printer, but she kept bringing in new business and eventually built up a little bit of cash.
As PostcardMania continued to grow, Gendusa noticed customers asking for other services. They would say things like, "Who built your website?" or "Can you do email marketing too?" So PostcardMania started branching into those areas as well. Today, the company offers all sorts of advertising and marketing for its clients and makes close to $20 million per year.
As you can see direct sales and marketing is what made her business the success it is today!
Blue Buddha Boutique. Rebeca Mojica went to a Renaissance Festival and noticed a unique metal belt made from chainmaille rings. After searching for something similar, she couldn't find the belts anywhere and decided to try and make her own.
Mojica spent $20 on that first set of rings and sold a few belts to a few friends and family. However, it wasn't until she started teaching other people how to make the belts that she really saw the potential for a business.
Mojica began teaching chainmaille classes and decided to sell the rings and pliers needed to make the belts to her students. She made $300 the first time she sold the supplies. Soon after, Blue Buddha Boutique was born and it rapidly became one of the top sellers of chainmaille jewelry supplies. Blue Buddha Boutique now has 13 employees and is set to break the million dollar mark in 2012.
M&E Painting. Matt Shoup worked as a painter during the summers in college. When he was let go from his job his financial services job a few years later, he decided to start a painting business.
Starting with just $100, Shoup woke up the next day and went door to door in his neighborhood, knocking on houses that looked like they could use a paint job. He enlisted a few friends for help and M&E Painting made more than $500,000 in that first year. Seven years later, the company has more than 4,000 customers and makes between $1.5 and $2.5 million every year. Source
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